1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an Electro-Static Discharge (ESD) structure for protecting a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) module and other components in a terminal, and in particular, to an ESD structure for protecting an LCD module and other components in a terminal by preventing the degradation of radiation performance caused by noise arising from high voltage of an LCD module and increasing robustness against external ESD.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, electronic communication products are equipped with a display including an LCD panel to indicate operation states to users. Regarding a wireless portable terminal, its trend is toward small size, lightweight, and diversified function. Terminals have been commercialized to meet various user demands. For example, they have a plurality of speakers for emitting polyphonic melodies and a high-resolution color display for displaying images in tens of thousands of pixels to millions of pixels. Developmental efforts are being expended to further develop such functions.
With the recent deployment of Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB), the importance of the LCD module has been increasing and wireless portable terminals with functions suited for the high-resolution color display are on the market. For instance, they provide transmission of moving pictures, gaming, and video calls, and have an optical photographing system serving as a digital camera or a camcorder. Accordingly, the high-resolution color LCD module must be protected against an increased clock frequency and a high voltage due to the increase in the number of pixels. In this context, a need exists for a device for appropriately grounding the high voltage.
Moreover, unexpected external introduction of static electricity ranges from a few kilovolts to tens of kilovolts, for example, adversely affecting an LCD module and other components in a terminal. As a result, the terminal may malfunction or be damaged. Hence terminal manufactures compete each other to develop an ESD structure for also appropriately grounding static electricity introduced to the terminal.
Traditionally, an ESD structure is installed on a case frame with the LCD module mounted therein in the terminal since the LCD module is most susceptible to external static electricity. For example, the ESD structure is implemented by partially coating Electro-Magnetic Interference (EMI) paint around the corners of an opening through which the LCD panel is exposed, that is, on the mounting surface of the LCD panel, and then fixing the LCD module on the coating, to thereby discharge external static electricity.
The conventional ESD structure, however, has limitations in maintaining stable ESD capability because practically the EMI pigment is hard to coat uniformly lengthwise on the mounting surface of the LCD module due to spatial limits in terms of terminal size.